I found this neat little snowman drummer at a Christmas shop in Santa Fe and thought it would make a great project with the kids.

So, I gathered little styrofoam balls, striped red and white paper clips to make the arms and legs and clay and little pompoms to make the shoes and hats.

I even found some little drums among my Christmas ornaments that would work.

And by golly, during the summer I found this packet of glass cubes at Tuesday Morning; not sure what it was for, but it sure looked like ice. Maybe a snowman could be sitting on a block of ice, I thought.

Well, things don't always work out as planned.

When I was visiting my daughter, my granddaughter Jenna said she wanted to come over and do a project, and two of her little friends who were there chimed in and said they wanted to do one, too. So, their mothers brought them over right after noon one Saturday afternoon, and while the mothers went shopping, I altered my plans. Because neither of the other girls had done a project like my grandchildren were used to doing, I decided to keep it simple.

The basic ingredients included some Christmas picks for simple trees, baking soda as snow, Tacky glue and white paint. The base was cardboard, and the forms for the snowdrifts were pieces of styrofoam.

What a mess! They all got tired and left to take a break and eat some chocolate pudding while I surveyed the tabletop and adjusted my plans again.

Forget all the fancy stuff; these girls wanted to finish what they had and go practice their little cheerleading routines. So, that's what we did. Here's basically what they wound up with: a snowman wearing a hat in the snow beside an icy tree.

Here's Jenna with her project. Unfortunately, it doesn't show up too well on that white paper plate which I gave them to carry it home on. It isn't visible here, but there is an icy pond in the center. The ice was made from the flexible silver paper top on a Folger's coffee can. They just cut an irregular shape; glued it down, then brought snow up to the edges.

Here is Kara, with her first project. She was very pleased and proud of what she had done. Samantha, the youngest and smallest, mugs for the camera behind her.

And here is Samanatha, pleased as punch. She decided to use the ice cube with her snowman.

I didn't have a prototype (other than the snowman drummer, which I knew we would not tackle), but here's what I did as I was demonstrating various techniques. The camera angle foreshortens the stick arm on the snowwoman. She really looks pretty wretched because I was trying to figure out how to make her sit on that ice cube. I didn't have time to do anything else, however, because by the time we got our mess cleaned up, the girls wanted me to come watch their cheerleading routines and that was the end of our snow people day.

I still want to make that drummer with the red and white striped legs and red shoes!

Unfortunately, Samantha won't be with us to mug at the camera again because her family moved to Alabama, but maybe Kara will want to do another project with Jenna and me one of these days. Maybe this summer when Laura comes for a visit ....